Devils sign Dawson Mercer to three-year contract with $4 million AAV

The New Jersey Devils have signed center Dawson Mercer to a three-year contract with a $4 million contract, according to TSN insider Darren Dreger.

Mercer was a restricted free agent after the conclusion of his three-year, entry-level contract with a $894,167 cap hit. He receives a raise of nearly $3 million per year, with his new contract obviously having the highest AAV of his career. With this new contract, the Devils lock him up until he’s 25 years old at 4.55% of the 2024-25 salary cap.

There are currently no details regarding any no-move/no-trade clauses or signing bonuses with this contract.

A somewhat common cap hit, Mercer shares his $4 million AAV with Alex Iafallo, Robby Fabbri, Ross Colton, Nino Niederreiter, Marcus Foligno, Ryan Hartman, Viktor Arvidsson, David Perron and Patrick Kane.

Mercer is coming off of a bit of a down season in 2023-24, where he had just 20 goals and 13 assists for 33 points in 82 games. It was nearly half of the points that he had from his breakout season in 2022-23, where he had 27 goals and 56 points, and even a bit of a drop from his rookie season in 2021-22, where he had 17 goals and 42 points.

Mercer was the 18th-overall pick for the Devils in the 2020 NHL Draft out of the QMJHL. After spending another season after the draft in the QMJHL, he made his NHL debut in 2021, and has spent the past three seasons in a full-time role with the Devils.

The Devils had a busy offseason, particularly with how they remodeled their defense and goaltending, acquiring Jacob Markstrom and signing Brett Pesce, Brenden Dillon and Jonathan Kovacevic, as well as bringing in Stefan Noesen, Paul Cotter and Tomas Tatar. New Jersey also added Kevin Labanc, Jakub Zboril, Andy Welinski and Michael Hutchinson to their training camp roster on professional tryouts. The Devils have just under $1 million in salary cap space with no more restricted free agents to sign.